Egypt

[johnnya24]

The statement that WW2 pulled the US out of the depression is one that has been debated by historians for a good number of years now, and I don't agree with it. I will agree it accelerated the ascent, but the US was already climbing out of the depression of the 1930s starting about 1937. There has also been a history of recessions in this country after the completion of wars.

Recessions are part of the cycle. Ordinary folk and bad/unlucky investors get hurt by recessions, not the elite.

I would say the bigger fear was preventing the US from going back into depression, rather than using the military to provide a foundation for future growth. There is a lot that is accidental about how our economies evolved post-war. There were dozens of theories going about at the time so some had to hit the dartboard, but I certainly don't believe that the way the US economy evolved, with its primacy on military power, was by evil design, even if certain of those theories were suggestive of what would occur, and even if many within had evil intent.

Theories aside, the way the US economy developed is in large part unavoidable, and dependent on historical events from 1939-1991. WW2 and the Cold War were real, and up until the early 1970's the mutual distrust was probably warranted. Those combined events meant that the US had no choice but to invest heavily in its military complex. The by-product is of course massive public investment in jobs and industry that cannot be outsourced abroad. This is the critical long term factor for the economy. Since the 1970's, I'd be inclined to say that the power elite, that had been fostered by 40 years of gigantic investment in the military complex, has had an agenda of its own, an agenda that is purely self serving. You can see that clearly now with the massive military intelligence power bloc that is basically now controlling the US government ("we stand together", that was General Alexander's threat/warning to Congress when he first appeared before the congressional committee in the aftermath of the NSA revelations - the "we" being the entire intelligence/military community - interfere with us at your peril).

The math:

1. The US military is the largest employer in the world - more than 1 million direct employees.
2. Private contractors for the US intelligence services alone employ almost as many. In 2010 there were 1,931 private companies in 10000 locations across the US dealing only with intelligence matters. This has since expanded under Obama. It's hard to estimate how many employees are directly employed by the Intelligence services.
3. Private military contractors currently outnumber military personnel in Afghanistan . There is currently a 1:6 private contractors / American soldier ratio. 30,000 of whom are Americans. I've read various wild accounts of the number of private contractors that were in Iraq at the height of the bonanza ... I don't think the US government even knows, and they certainly didn't know what they were up to.
4. Silicon Valley ... the NSA invests billions every year in silicon valley.
5. And we haven't mentioned the thousands of private companies that produce military equipment for the US (and foreign) government(s). Combined with sub-contractors, suppliers and offshoots, you are talking about 10's of millions of jobs that are dependent on the military ... entire towns, cities and communities built around the presence of military bases and production facilities.
6. And of course the collective effect of all this allows the US to be the most influential force in global politics. Trade agreements and alliances are paid for with military contracts or military aid.

That is the state of the economy. The military is the oil. It's the most stable element of the US economy, and most of the jobs within this sector are well paid and domestic, so the money is getting ploughed back into the economy, not going abroad. It's built on 70 years of investing between 20-50% of taxable income into the military-industrial-intelligence complex - like it or not, that's the reality. At the same time, civilian industry has jumped shipped and globalized their production base. Look at Detroit, once the shining beacon of US industry, now a ghost town.

How do you shift the largest military economy in history to a civilian economy, when the civilian foundation of the economy is in terminal decline? It's so much easier to keep the status quo.

Hence ... TERRORISM!

[johnnya24]

The real public meta-issue in the 1990's should have been how run an ethical military economy, while gradually over many decades shifting to more of a civilian based economy with less emphasis on enemies, real or imagined.

What happened was that there was no real meta-debate, except from the neo-cons who were devising plans from the early 90's to establish radical Islam as an "enemy of the future" and shift the theater of war away from Cold War zones to more profitable and exploitable zones with greater potential for conflict. They were largely ignored by Clinton in the 90's - he was too busy deregulating the financial services industry. They weren't going to make any mistakes when they got their hands on power. This became the only manifesto in play, because there was no real debate (scarily prescient ... or just a coincidence?).

12 years of constant religious war (from the perspective of the Muslim world), and a problem that didn't exist in the 90's, is now a potentially huge issue as radical Islam has become a real force in the Muslim world, especially with young people. Throw in some poverty, overpopulation, social turmoil and you have a recipe for future US prosperity.

From the horses mouth (1997):

Fulfilling these requirements [the military goals of the PFTNAC] is essential if America is to retain its militarily dominant status for the coming decades. Conversely, the failure to meet any of these needs must result in some form of strategic retreat. At current levels of defense spending, the only option is to try ineffectually to “manage” increasingly large risks: paying for today’s needs by shortchanging tomorrow’s; withdrawing from constabulary missions to retain strength for large-scale wars; “choosing” between presence in Europe or presence in Asia; and so on. These are bad choices. They are also false economies. The “savings” from withdrawing from theBalkans, for example, will not free up anywhere near the magnitude of funds needed for military modernization or transformation. But these are false economies in other, more profound ways as well. The true cost of not meeting our defense requirements will be a lessened capacity for American global leadership and, ultimately, the loss of a global security order that is uniquely friendly to American principles and prosperity.

ESTABLISH FOUR CORE MISSIONS for the U.S. military:

• defend the American homeland;
• fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
• perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
• transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs”;

[johnnya24]

... back on topic ... some more muslims shot down like dogs

It's Turned Into A Pretty Horrific Zero-Sum Game In Egypt, and it's going to get a whole lot worse before it has even a chance to get better.

[Hornsby]

The real public meta-issue in the 1990's should have been how run an ethical military economy, while gradually over many decades shifting to more of a civilian based economy with less emphasis on enemies, real or imagined.

What happened was that there was no real meta-debate, except from the neo-cons who were devising plans from the early 90's to establish radical Islam as an "enemy of the future" and shift the theater of war away from Cold War zones to more profitable and exploitable zones with greater potential for conflict. They were largely ignored by Clinton in the 90's - he was too busy deregulating the financial services industry. They weren't going to make any mistakes when they got their hands on power. This became the only manifesto in play, because there was no real debate (scarily prescient ... or just a coincidence?).

12 years of constant religious war (from the perspective of the Muslim world), and a problem that didn't exist in the 90's, is now a potentially huge issue as radical Islam has become a real force in the Muslim world, especially with young people. Throw in some poverty, overpopulation, social turmoil and you have a recipe for future US prosperity.

From the horses mouth (1997):

You'd certainly help your case considerably if you didn't quote from the wiki of a right wing think tank and claim that it's from "the horses mouth".

While I agree with some of what you posit, you take it about 5 steps too far, IMO. Unless you believe that the Illuminati and the Trilateral Commission are in charge of the world of course...

[chancellor]

You'd certainly help your case considerably if you didn't quote from the wiki of a right wing think tank and claim that it's from "the horses mouth"..

Shhh...they're in charge now. They'll install the voice recognition software and backtrace it. Then you show up, they bring out the satellite and you're fried with Y rays.

[Hornsby]

Shhh...they're in charge now. They'll install the voice recognition software and backtrace it. Then you show up, they bring out the satellite and you're fried with Y rays.

Y rays? Y RAYS??? Son of a Bitch! What the hell do those things even do to you?

[chancellor]

And all the douches who wanted Brotherhood folks murdered are getting their wish! Congrats......right? Democracy (but only if it's the right guy).

Well, if it were Muslim Brotherhood leadership folks, I'd have little issue. A liberal Brotherhood member makes the wildest right winger in our country look like flaming liberals by comparison. But of course, it's not, which, again is a Muslim Brotherhood truism - inflame the masses and then run like hell when anything resembling real trouble arrives. That reflects Egypt's military, which has a storied history of inflaming it's only opponent, and then running like hell when real troops arrive.

To the democracy point, hey, go for it. Just pull the $1.3 billion in aid since the winner has a storied history of not merely supporting terrorists, but actually being the terrorists themselves. Oh, and wanting to do to Jews things that even Hitler didn't imagine in Mein Kampf.

[Frank]

Douche?.......Is that you tango?

[umjewman]

This is an incredible picture I saw from Egypt. People just hanging out on the beach while parts of the city are burning.

16.1n014.egypt2--300x300.jpg

[johnnya24]

You'd certainly help your case considerably if you didn't quote from the wiki of a right wing think tank and claim that it's from "the horses mouth".

While I agree with some of what you posit, you take it about 5 steps too far, IMO. Unless you believe that the Illuminati and the Trilateral Commission are in charge of the world of course...

I deliberately took a break from SB political wrangling

That "right wing think tank" was one of the most important bodies in the development of the now pervasive neo-con ideology. There were others, but the signatories of that manifesto make it an ideal source: Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Fukuyama, Zoellick etc. etc. It's a scary list of names.

There's no conspiracy. There doesn't have to be. What there is is a lack of meta-debate concerning the systematic way our political systems have changed. The entire political system has intrinsically evolved to give special interest groups and especially the unelected and unanswerable leaders of finance and industry a pre-eminent position within the political process. You don't need to imagine conspirators in smoking rooms when the entire political system is designed and funded by putting special interests in the same room as politicians and political parties, and legally paying them for influence. When the entire political system is in the pocket of the 1%, it will obvious work to the benefit of the 1%.

It's hard to pinpoint the ideology because it is quite distinct from previous ideologies. This is its great power. When you can't see it, how to do fight it? What is its public form? It certainly can't be found in the puerile political debates that masquerade as politics these days. The public face of the system obsesses over micro-political issues, occasionally macro-issues, and leaves the meta-issues untouched and undebated. Anyone who tries to talk about the meta-issues is labelled a conspiracy theorist, or accused of harming national security.

They publicly co-opted the language of classical liberalism for coherence purposes, and a false dialectic with social liberalism emerged to become the public face of our new sterile meaningless politics. But social liberalism is dead. The Democratic Party's current neo-liberal agenda is a dressed-down version if the neo-con agenda. These days the differences when it comes to meta-issues are purely semantic and surface. Again, no conspiracy. 1990's Third Wayism has the same roots as the neo-con agenda, but when the neo-con agenda took control in the early 2000's, the possibilities of Third Wayism were washed away and the "centre" or "centre-left" became an empty neo-liberal shell with no real differentiating agenda (except social issues with social liberal semantics). The Bush-Gore election was one of the biggest turning points in modern Western history. If Gore wins, Third Wayism had a chance (or at least an alternative agenda not based around military expansionism)

What is seen as the "real" alternative is politics these days? - the naive absurd libertarianism of Ron Paul? in the UK, the semi-racist nationalist UKIP. The real power of the neo-con agenda is in its pervasiveness. It has infected all the layers of power by making them dependent on this ideology for their continued health. It also massively expanded the scope of those layers of power that will actively work towards the quiet promotion of this agenda for the purposes of self-preservation (e.g. the massive expansion of the military and intelligence super-structure). You can simplify the debate by looking at these structures as self interested institutions, and analyse them according to how individual institutions behave for their own interests when in a time of crisis.

For example, after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, the military-intelligence community was faced with a battle for survival and funding. What was the point of spending so much now the old enemy is gone? This was real, and perceived within the intelligence community as a real threat, both in terms of national security and self-preservation. The neo-Con agenda, central to which was a massive increase in spending on the military and intelligence infrastructure, would have been a godsend to these institutions, and (crucially) the individuals within these institutions whose livelihood depends on them. You don't need a conspiracy to see how and why this agenda was embraced by the military and intelligence community. Imagine the power you can wield when you have military levels of compliance from all the branches of power.

It's not a conspiracy. Labelling something as a conspiracy is the modern way to avoid meta-debate. Without any real meta-debate the true nature of how the institutions of power and special interest groups are intertwined and working for their own mutual interests is not a topic for public debate. Meta-debate is avoided at all costs in the press and media. The financial crisis, and then the NSA controversy has really helped to reveal the extent of the power the institutions that rely on this pervasive neo-con agenda wield, and the extent to which they are embedded within the structures of power. If Snowden did one thing, it was to pull back the curtain on the corruption of power that exists behind our super-spun sanitised media politics.

Without meta-debate the conclusions can seem like 5 steps away.

[TranaGreg]

good article by a former canadian ambassador ...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2...democracy.html

In reviewing the experience of countries that attempted and (in most cases) succeeded in making the transition from authoritarian societies to democracy in the wave that began with Portugal and Spain in the 1970s and swept through Eastern Europe (after the Communist collapse in 1989), Latin America, and many countries in Africa and Asia, many scholars, including those in the seven-year project I direct under the Community of Democracies, point to the necessity of what’s called “pacting” among the contestants for power.

Normally, the incoming revolutionary order seldom wins a clean sweep, and there needs to be some kind of tacit agreement with the old order not to turn everything completely upside down.

Without such agreement, a country will stagger forward and backward in unresolved, polarized conflict where “democracy and dictatorship live side-by-side,” as St. Petersburg’s Mayor Anatoly Sobchak said about Russia’s problems in the 1990s (which have only become aggravated).

All societies are pluralist. But institutions must be inclusive. That is the most important rule of democracy.

One of the West’s early misplaced emphasis was the belief that generally free and fair elections was what democracy was all about.